2110-5-12-21

HOUSE OF COMMONS LIBRARY

May: 4: 32

My own little Precious

I do hope you & Alice get home safely to-day. Isn't it beastly cold weather?

Barrie's luncheon was really rather wonderful. An anarchist bomb would have destroyed the public life of England - Ramsay [Macdonald), Austen [Chamberlain], Neville [Chamberlain], Winston [Churchill], [Philip] Snowden, John Simon, S.B. [Stanley Baldwin], [? Charlie? Londonderry?], [Augustus] Birrell, the American & French Ambassadors, Cosmo [Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury] etc. We had little speeches - a queer rigmarole from Barrie about his canary, a

[annotations by ST]

halting speech from Ramsay, & admirable speeches from S.B. & E[dward] Grey. Cosmo [Lang] looks better but very frail still. Ramsay is blooming. He has his operation to-morrow. Apparently he is only given a local anaesthetic, &, though he has no pain, he is conscious of the knife cutting into his eyeball!

I have sent your mother tickets for Monday. Expect me by first train on Friday.

Much love

from John

I have made great friends with Freyberg